The Couples Institute

We all procrastinate in some place in our lives and generally we are critical of ourselves for doing it. 

Now you can harness the tenacity of the procrastination habit and make your life better at the same time. 

Simply apply it to the habit of worrying. Whenever you start to worry, just say to yourself, "I will worry later when I have some solid evidence that I need to worry. Until then I will postpone my worry and do it later."

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In the last two blogs I described how our daughter Molly slept on the mattress from hell while we were on vacation, without squawking about it at all. 

I then threw out a challenge for all of us to go a week without complaining or whining.

Here's what I discovered. I don't whine a lot but I can still stew, fret or worry. This didn't come as a surprise but it did help clarify the distinction between whining and worry.

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In my last column, I talked about our daughter Molly’s not complaining about sleeping on the mattress from hell in our vacation condo. I remarked to Molly that she actually doesn’t seem to be much of a complainer at all and inquired how she developed her great attitude.

It is not like she is passive and simply accepts whatever fate deals her at any given moment. She is pretty assertive.

Here is her explanation of why complaining is not much of an option.

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The situation: our family vacation in a one bedroom condo in Hawaii

The problem: Our daughter Molly wakes up from sleeping on a lumpy, scratchy, sorry excuse for a sofa bed mattress. It’s not much thicker than a credit card.

The discovery: I sat on the edge of this folded out “thing” disguised as mattress and uttered a spontaneous, “Wow, what the heck is this thing anyway? Molly, how are you able to sleep on this? You haven’t been complaining about this at all.”

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